mrjivraj

Companies that lose their leadership positions tend to focus only on incremental improvements. Such companies focus on optimizations: on cost reductions, product upgrades, short term stock price movements etc and less on the dynamic changes in customer needs.

This creates blind spots. This may be due to myopia, or perhaps inertia or misaligned organizational incentives.

Good news is, this inability evolve creates the opportunity for upstarts.

Circle of life..

Why Multiple coffee cans? A few reasons

1) As new money comes in, I build new coffee cans based on current circumstances and prices offered by the market.

2) Provides Time Diversification. Not all times are created equal. At certain times, opportunities are better. But since marketing timing is difficult, especially since this is somewhat of a passive strategy, I'd rather simply invest periodically.

I wrote about coffee cans here: https://playingfordoubles.substack.com/p/the-coffee-can-port...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tBrZEMFK9XNWxiqOxE8o...

I literally had one line where I made a joking comment and then applauded their ability to clone and adapt.

you may assuming cloning is a bad thing.

But, yes Shameless Cloning Can Lead to Financial Success :)

I actually wrote about it here: https://playingfordoubles.substack.com/p/shameless-cloning-c...

This reminds me of a study which showed that even if you bought the same stocks a month after Buffett and his holding company Berkshire Hathaway disclosed their own purchases, you'd still be way ahead of the game.

"The market ... appears to under-react to the news of a Berkshire stock investment since a hypothetical portfolio that mimics Berkshire's investments created the month after they are publicly disclosed earns positive abnormal returns of 14.26% per year."

But Buffett is a long term investor. I am not sure how long the Pelosis hold their stocks...

But yes, insider trades :(

And for anyone thinking along those lines, I'd argue that the goal isn't to get to $1M/yr but rather to a place of financial freedom. I think more people would hit that mark, if in addition to plowing money into growing their businesses, they also diversified and invested their cashflows effectively.

Below is a story of an Optometrist who became a billionaire over time. His fortune came from two things: 1) He started a successful business that did about $10 million/yr in profit. 2) Over his lifetime, he continuously redirected his business profits into stocks.

https://twitter.com/mrjivraj/status/1425230319796596744?s=20

update: for some reason the link above goes to the beginning of the thread instead of the tweet about said Optometrist. You can scroll to Tweet #27 in the thread.

enjoy the thread...and don't forget to compound :)

This article references something called The Coffee Can Portfolio. The idea of a coffee can is simple: You try to find the best stocks you can and let them sit for years. You incur no costs with such a portfolio, and it is simple to manage.

Robert Kirby, the Portfolio Manager who first introduced the idea recognized that most professional investors in the stock market focused on preserving capital as opposed to growing it. As a result, when their portfolios became “unbalanced”, that is, their winning stocks started to become large portions of their portfolios, they trimmed those positions and transferred capital into their “less successful” investments, the ones that had gotten “cheaper”.

Although that might sound prudent, what is really happening is that money is being transferred from the most dynamic companies, to the least dynamic companies.

This idea helped me become a longer term investor, and as a result, a better investor.

You can read more here: https://playingfordoubles.substack.com/p/invest-like-a-vc-in...

I wish they had physical distribution so that I can go try it out...doesn't seem like they do. But they do have a 30 day return trial.

I ask because I also started taking notes, primarily because I want to write about some of the things I come across. I write an investment newsletter (https://playingfordoubles.substack.com)

I probably need to get myself some type of filing cabinet to keep track of articles I'd like to revisit in the future.

I think i have printed probably about 30 so far, 2 pages per sheet + double sided so 4 on a page

There were a few articles I kept coming back to but couldn't get through because of distractions, so yesterday I decided to print out the articles I wanted to read. 30 mins later, I had gone through 3 three great reads (plus made notes).

It was great. I learned a lot, and they spurred some ideas as well. I think I might start doing more of this.

I'll look into powerbi - thanks for the suggestion.

It sounds like you're using it to track your budget & net worth.

I actually disagree with tracking my investments this granularly. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should. I find it's better to zoom out when it comes to investing and let time & compounding work for me. If it was granular to the day, I think I'd drive myself crazy! :)

A couple of years ago, I started this spreadsheet to share my investments with close friends and family.

One unexpected benefit has been that i have gotten my sister interested in investing. Since investing is a big passion of mine, it has been personally very rewarding to be able to discuss investing topics with her.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tBrZEMFK9XNWxiqOxE8o...

Been contemplating whether to leverage no-code tools to help level-up the functionality and visualizations

Would appreciate any pointers as appropriate. Thanks.

after looking into it further, it shows up as black text on desktop but white text on mobile for some reason ?...

The last one is actually from June, not April.

Yes, I believe that many investors are in a hurry to concentrate their investments. I prefer taking a large number of bets with high upside potential, thereby getting the benefits of diversification but also a decent expected value.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tBrZEMFK9XNWxiqOxE8o...

The GoogleFinance Function has been a great way to help me "visualize progress" in a very different way compared to default visualizations provided by stock brokers

I have also tried to keep track of analytics more manually but hope to find some time to automate later (if you wanna help, lmk :)).

Basic metrics like the following: Hit Rate: % of investments that had a profit / Loss Rate: % of investments that had a loss / Size of Avg Winner / Size of Avg Loser / Expected Value of Investments / Win to Loss Ratio / Avg Holding Period / Opportunity cost analysis (eg: what is the stock price say 12-24 months after I sell?)

These basic things would help the individual investor get a lot more insight than they can easily get today.

Btw, I noticed you used to work at Opera. As you might have seen on the sheet, I recently invested in them. I'd welcome the opportunity to hear your perspectives on the company. Would you be open to a brief chat about the company?

Take care.

Are you just referring to the default white cell background that google sheets have?

The idea of a Coffee Can is simple: You try to find the best stocks you can and let them sit for years. You incur no costs with such a portfolio, and it is simple to manage.

I share mine here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tBrZEMFK9XNWxiqOxE8o...